My Early Life Haunts Me
Artist Talk with Pam Skelton

“My Early Years Haunt Me” is a video essay (duration 17 mins) that was inspired by my discovery of the Leodis Image Archive. I was fascinated by the images of Sheepscar documented by the Leeds City Engineers prior to slum clearance in the early 1950s. These images brought back my earliest and most enduring childhood memories of living with asthma.

1951 Chapeltown Road, Sheepscar, downstairs a shop listed in my father’s name L. Hurwitz Boot and Shoe Factors. The flat was damp and the wallpaper was peeling off the walls. Factory chimneys rose above homes while smog and pollution and blackened buildings were the setting of my childhood trauma, asthma and St James’s Hospital.

In this session we will watch the video and discuss any issues and practices that can facilitate memory work, place, history and image in a group discussion.

Pam Skelton is a London-based artist and researcher, formally Reader in Fine Art at Central Saint Martin’s where she taught on the BA Fine Art Course until 2013 and was a PhD supervisor until 2026.

Pam Skelton September 2026